The white chalk cliffs of Jasmund National Park on Germany’s Rügen Island are one of northern Europe’s most dramatic coastal landscapes — gleaming white Cretaceous cliffs rising 118 metres above the Baltic Sea from ancient beech forest, immortalised in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Königsstuhl (King’s […]
Šumava National Park is the Czech Republic’s largest protected area — an immense expanse of ancient forest, peat bogs, and glacial lakes along the Bavarian border that forms the green heart of Central Europe and one of the continent’s most important wilderness landscapes. Known in German as the Böhmerwald (Bohemian Forest), Šumava is a UNESCO […]
Categories: Czech Republic, Nature
Veľká Fatra National Park in Slovakia – popular tourist destination for hikers and trekkers Updated: May 19, 2020 | By Claire | 1 More Veľká Fatra National Park lies in central Slovakia – in Žilina and Banská Bystrica Region. The National Park was declared on 1 April 2002 as an upgrade of the Protected Landscape […]
Słowiński National Park is one of Poland’s most extraordinary natural landscapes — a UNESCO World Heritage coastal reserve on the Baltic Sea whose defining feature is its shifting sand dunes, massive golden mountains of sand up to 42 metres high that move inland at a rate of 3–10 metres per year, slowly consuming the pine […]
National Park Gesäuse in Styria, Austria Updated: December 27, 2020 | By Claire | 1 More The National Park Gesäuse was founded in 2002 and is the most recent national park in Austria and is known for its steep mountains with sharp edges and rough gores. It includes parts of the Styrian communities of Admont, […]
Kalkalpen National Park is Austria’s largest contiguous forest wilderness — 20,850 hectares of limestone mountains, deep gorges, and ancient beech forests in Upper Austria that form part of the UNESCO World Heritage “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe.” One of Austria’s least-visited national parks, Kalkalpen offers a rare […]
Hohe Tauern National Park is the largest national park in Austria and the biggest protected area in the Alps — a colossal 1,856 km² wilderness spanning the states of Salzburg, Carinthia, and Tyrol that encompasses Austria’s highest peak (Grossglockner, 3,798m), over 300 mountains above 3,000 metres, 342 glaciers, and the spectacular Grossglockner High Alpine Road […]
Lemmenjoki National Park is Finland’s largest national park and one of the most extensive wilderness areas in Europe — a 2,850 km² expanse of pristine boreal forest, vast open fells, and the wild Lemmenjoki River valley in Finnish Lapland that has been home to Sámi reindeer herders for centuries and remains one of the best […]
Muránska planina National Park is one of Slovakia’s most beautiful and least-visited protected areas — a vast limestone plateau in central Slovakia where the magnificent Muráň Castle ruins perch on a 935-metre-high ridge, wild horses (the Noriker breed, reintroduced to maintain the grassland) roam the high pastures, and the biodiversity is so exceptional that the […]
Slovak Karst National Park protects the largest karst landscape in Central Europe — a UNESCO World Heritage area of limestone plateaus, deep gorges, and over 1,100 documented caves on the Slovak-Hungarian border, including several of Europe’s most extraordinary accessible show caves. This 346 km² park is the Slovak half of the transboundary Aggtelek Karst protected […]
